London Your My Home

Back down South this weekend. Not London but commuterland in Surrey near Camberley,

Spent Monday in the Capital, and walking across the  Thames on the way from from Waterloo station to Charing Cross Road, I felt the usual pang of homesickness, even after an absence of 20 plus years.

But I don't belong there anymore, it's not my London anymore.

London belongs to the young and the childless, those who don't mind the hassle, the noise. It belongs to the people who like to disappear into the crowd. It belongs to the World not to me.

Snow Is Falling All Around

The snow is still here. Not much has fallen in the last couple of days but there must be 15cm in my garden now. CORRECTION...I 've just looked out of the window and its snowing heavily again.Less than an hour after I cleared the road outside my house for the third time since Friday last week.

The flat roof on the extension to my living room is leaking under the onslaught of the snow and sleet. I was up at 5am on Monday putting tarpaulin over it. I was out last night until 10pm painting an emergency roof repair product over the seams in the asphalt. I'll just have to wait and see if that works.

Still my internet connection is great and so here is some music

White Mice- The Modettes

This is from 1979 and cracks along. It has nearly incomprehensible lyrics. I saw them around the time of this single.

  Here is a bit more information about them.

Thirty Thousand

This Blog has now exceeded 30,00 page views. It's taken almost 4 years but I'm still humbled that anybody actually bothers to read this stuff. Erudite and informative and witty it is not.

A simple straightforward take on my interests ( see title of the Blog- although football should be in there too) is what this stuff is all about. Boring, repetitive and with random moments of brilliance. A bit like life. At least a bit like my life.

The snow continues to dominate the landscape. Not much has fallen in the last couple of days but there is still about 5- 10cm or so of it lying about. Its not as cold either we got above freezing today.

I am in a better mood than I normally am at this time of year. I put that down to a few things. Firstly I am running ( well at least exercising. Only 1 run due to the snow but a couple of sessions on the cross trainer). I always feel  better when I am exercising.

Secondly, after four weeks of complaining I got a visit from my ISP's Bright Sparks team. He walked in , took one look at the router, condemned it as "ancient" and replaced it with a much more modern one. Plug in, switch on and Hey Presto! over 4mbps. That means we can watch iPlayer again. It means I can upload some of my favourite music again for you.

The cold winter weather ( minus 5 yesterday) has numbed both my fingers as I scrape the frost off the car but also my mind. Although that might be numbed by two 11 hour days at work and evenings sat in Community Centres smelling of sweat and urine listening to Councillors justify the city council budget proposals to a disinterested audience.

I’m not a supporter of the current administration ( Labour)and something is wrong here. The Leader of the Council is obviously playing politics with his 100 million cuts over three years  proposals, but then again I would expect him to play politics. But the talk the other night of community organisations taking over services was both naïve and a little opportunistic on the part of at least one of the councillors. The same one who has his own business based in the city  valley and led residents of a  god-awful estate to set up their own ( and ultimately doomed) company to run it. It sounds like lots of arms length “community” businesses/ mini quangos all run by people made redundant at our expense on huge pay offs and pensions running the same services with less accountability and for profit. Thats maybe what the government wants. I didn’t think Labour councils wanted it too.

Meanwhile on I go trudging through the compacted snow, across ice to give the good news to people that their income is going to be cut by this Government.

Winter

Still recovering from this cold/flu type virus that has plagued me since Christmas day. I feel lacking in energy and generally under the weather. I have three colleagues in my office off with the same thing and my wife’s organisation has also been hit hard by it.

I need to shake it off and get out and start my training for the Sunderland half marathon on 28^th April. It is only 16 weeks away and I haven’t run since October so I am a bit out of condition. The four pounds I put on at Christmass doesn’t help either and I am struggling to get that off, although I am 5 pounds lighter than I was this time last year. I pledged to lose a stone before the Berlin Marathon and although that’s still 8 months away time has a habit of slipping away from you if you don’t plan it out.

Music wise I am catching up with my repeat listening of all the albums I listed on my Christmas List post trying to decide which one was the best of the year.

 

Welfare State

A week back at work and Christmas seems a long time ago.

January is a depressing month and this  January is no exception although, aided by the  wet and mild weather,  it  feels more like early October than the middle of winter. But cold weather is on its way apparently.

Cold winds have started to blow through the lives of our tenants already. Although I doubt many of them have been affected by the changes to Child Benefit payments, the working minority will be affected by the change to Child Tax credits. Those affected that aren’t working and those that are in low paid part time employment have a reprieve until April when the under occupation charge( bedroom tax) starts.

We have completed 20% of the visits needed to inform people of this change and I have written about this before here. Post-Christmas, as I suspected, it is  a slightly more hostile reception as it now seems more real.

Overall though the reaction has been acceptance and in a majority of cases agreement that something needs to be done to curtail the reach of the welfare State, and these are the people affected by the changes. False consciousness? Perhaps.

My own view, cynical though it is by years of exposure to  people who have manipulated, lied and cheated their way through the benefit system, is that something had to give. With or without the recession we have allowed a dependency culture in some parts of society and an" its ok if you can get away with it" culture in all parts of society ( in my mind the two are linked).

The last Government fostered  this and they were well intentioned but they are/were an elite that that has literally no experience of how ordinary people live, work and react.

Back To Life

Back to reality.

Happy New Year to you all.This year is going to be a goood one. Or is that just blind optimism in the face of reality?

Work tomorrow. It feels like I 've been out of the office a lot longer than a week.


Been a mixed week. Christmas Day was good, one of our best. Boxing Day came and with it the cold/flu bug that my son kindly brought home with him. I've been up and down ever since. Some days so tired I can barely get out of bed. Other days fine.

Spent a large part of today taking down the In- Laws Christmas decorations and putting them back in their loft. How my father-in-law manages I don't know.

Football wise I still think that despite Posh's wins over the Christmas/New Year period we are  50/50 to go down.

My son graduates this year, so does my daughter-it looks like she will go onto to complete another year at college to ensure she gets an Honours degree.

For me it's going to be a Year Of Running. Two half marathons, at least one 10k and the Berlin Marathon in September. Although the way I feel now I couldn't run for a bus.

Music- well who knows but I am determined to get to more gigs.